Racial segregation is both illegal, in violating the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act, and unconstitutional, in violating Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Some whites had better get together, and sue UConn for about $1,000,000,000, before some blacks do it.

The University of Connecticut is hoping that black males will graduate at a higher rate if they spend more time with one another, and is building a new residence hall to facilitate just that.

The ScHOLA²RS House—which stands for "Scholistic [sic] House Of Leaders who are African American Researchers and Scholars"—"is a scholastic initiative to groom, nurture, and train the next generation of leaders to address grand challenges in society through the promotion of academic success in undergraduate programs at the University of Connecticut and in competitive graduate programs," the website states.

"It is a space for African

American men to come

together and validate their

experiences that they may

have on campus."

[English translation: It's a place where racist black men can reinforce each other's paranoid delusions that they are victims of white racism, and plan and carry out race hoaxes.]

"ScHOLA²RS House is a Learning Community designed to support the scholastic efforts of male students who identify as African[-]American/Black through academic and social/emotional support, access to research opportunities, and professional development," it continues. "The intent of this Learning Community is to increase the retention and persistence of students using educational and social experiences to enhance their academic success at UConn and beyond in graduate and professional school placement."

"African American males graduate at a lower rate than their peers," Dr. Erik Hines, Faculty Director for the initiative, told Fox61, noting that African-American males graduated at a rate of only 54 percent last year, compared to 82.5 percent for the campus as a whole.

"It is a space for African American men to, one, come together, and validate their experiences that they may have on campus," he explained. "Number two, it's also a space where they can have conversation and also talk with individuals who come from the same background who share the same experience."

[The imbecile just said the same thing twice with different words!]

The specialized housing does not—quite—constitute a "segregated" residence, as it is currently optional, much like the "affinity housing" that other schools have put in place to serve as a "safe space" for minority students.

[Bull. Of course, it's segregated. Do white students get to live only with whites? Of course, not. That would be segregation!]

“I was not pleased; my immediate thought was ‘What?’” Haddiyyah Ali, a fourth-semester Africana studies and political science major, told The Daily Campus. “I know there had to be a lot of research that went into it…but just for me coming from a student perspective, my initial thought was what about black women and girls – what about us?”

[Why don't we get racially segregated housing, too?! BTW, no real research went into it; I guarantee it.]

Noting that only 43 black men will be able to enroll in the program, Ali added that "I will always contest to the fact that black men on the campus aren’t given enough resources, I will in no way dispel that fact, but my questioning isn’t if they need, but is if they need it in this way."

Isaac Bloodworth, a sixth-semester puppetry major, however, ascribed opposition to the plan as simply racist.

"The white portion of the University of Connecticut is probably not ready for it," he speculated. "You have people who are going to go against it because they are just racist and they see this as a form of segregation or that we’re getting better things than they are."

In the summer of 2008, I came up with a modest investment strategy. I didn’t tell The Boss about it, because she would have gotten very loud and aggressive about not doing it, but I started studying the Forbes 100 with my then eight-year-old, future chief of research. I’d check out each firm’s Forbes profile, including its dividend prices and rate of return on investment. But as I felt ready to pull the trigger, the meltdown happened, and Bush started bailing out Wall Street firms. As I was convinced that once the government intervened in the market, the whole shebang would be corrupted based on who had inside information, with everyone else left holding the bag, I flushed my investment plans. As it turns out, the rot has since gone much deeper than I feared.

The following article can be rough going for those of us unschooled in finance, but the summary is, Not only are governmental financial institutions like Social Security, Freddie Mac, and Sallie Mae Ponzi schemes but so, too, are a great many private financial institutions.

Let’s say you lend your brother-in-law, Pauli, 5,000-bucks so he can get his fledgling construction business off-the-ground. Then, you find out a week later that ‘good-old Pauli’ has shot the wad playing the horses at Long-acres and buying cocktails for his loafer-friends at Matt’s Mad Dog tavern? Would you feel like you’d been ripped off?

Sure you would. But when some slick corporate fraudster pulls the same scam, no one even raises an eyebrow.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about the way that corporate bosses are allowed to take the hard-earned money from Mom and Pop investors and divide it among their freeloading shareholder friends via stock buybacks….

Saturday, January 30, 2016

#1 Start a Black Oscars. An all-black governing board could nominate as many individuals as they felt gave an above average performance. The top 10 nominees would get the top award, the next 50 would get a participation award.

#2 Start a new category at the regular Oscars. Call it the Oscar Whiner award. Give it to the top 10 whiners who complain about ethnic diversity.

At the beginning of every year, the Pope delivers an address in Rome to welcome the foreign diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican. Pope Francis, a nice guy, has just delivered such a speech. It deserves attention.

The main theme of Francis’s speech is immigration… But Pope Francis neglects to discuss what is for some of us so disturbing about the current migration into Europe…

The Pope does allude vaguely to “the grave crisis of migration” — but he is sure that those migrants who are true to their faith, whatever that faith may be … are not the problem. For “every authentic practice of religion cannot fail to promote peace.”

DENVER — Denver police say they have responded to reports that several people have been shot or stabbed at the Denver Coliseum.

The Denver Post reports that police spokesman Sonny Jackson said two people were shot and one was stabbed on Saturday just after 1 p.m. Jackson did not release any information about the severity of their injuries.

The Colorado Motorcycle Expo is being held this weekend at the Coliseum on the National Western Stockshow complex.

The Post reports that officers have filled the parking lot of the Coliseum and are escorting people from the building.

Donald Trump is the first alpha male to run for president since L.B.J., but his opponents think it's clever to claim that he's "scared" of Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly because he's said he's skipping this week's Republican debate. This is like attacking 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney for being a libertine — or President Bill Clinton for being boring.

In addition to being the only candidate who will build a wall and deport illegals, apparently Trump is the only candidate who knows how to land a punch.

Whenever you hear someone say Trump is boycotting the debate because of Kelly, remember that he didn't pull out until Fox issued a juvenile press release, saying it had heard from "a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly" and "a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers."

Wow — where did Trump ever get the idea that Fox was treating him badly?

Fox has made a habit of insulting Trump — provided he's not there to respond. After the first debate — which, incidentally, all the polls say Trump won — Fox let it be known that the moderators had been prepared to forcibly remove Trump from the debate if he failed to follow the rules. Brett Baier even revealed their cute little speech before they would escort him to the elevator: "We don't want to have to escort you to the elevator outside this boardroom. But we're locked and loaded."

Trump has gotten along well enough with bankers, unions, mafia dons and New York City bureaucrats to make himself a billionaire. Why him? Why not Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)? And why leak it after it was obviously not necessary?

It's true that Trump has focused his complaints about Fox News's coverage of him on the network's star anchor, Kelly. I assume he's using Kelly as a cat's paw for an attack against the entire Rupert Murdoch enterprise, which is implacably pro-open borders, pro-amnesty and, consequently, anti-Trump.

No one thinks Kelly was up in her office alone, furiously scribbling her questions for Trump. Before that first debate, there were stories all over about the whole Fox News team working on the debate questions.

But most people don't know who Murdoch is. Kelly is a star. By attacking her, Trump anathematizes the entire, pro-amnesty network.

One of the biggest problems facing the nation is that viewers think of Fox as the "conservative" network. If NBC or ABC were this spiteful to Trump, everyone would see it for what it is: political bias. Your enemies can never hurt you; only your "friends" can.

Fox News's bias is more insidious. The hosts avoid stridently attacking Trump. You simply never hear from any pro-Trump guests — unless they're completely ineffective. Immigration-opponents have been aggressively shut out — just as they were when Mr. Amnesty John McCain was running for president in 2008; when the Senate was debating Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) amnesty bill in 2013; and when congressional Republicans were trying to defund President Obama's executive amnesty last year.

Are you seeing the pattern? When it comes to immigration, Fox News is indistinguishable from George Soros.

After each of the six debates, Fox News commentators, hosts, analysts, focus groups and body language experts all crapped on Trump and proclaimed pro-amnesty Rubio "the winner." (By the fourth debate, I began playing "Carnac the Magnificent" on Twitter, predicting "Marco Rubio" to the question, "Who will Fox News claim won the debate?")

Then all the polls would come out showing Trump the resounding winner.

But with every other news outlet screaming that Fox News is the extreme right-wing network, most Fox viewers are completely clueless. Surely, Fox News is giving us the best anti-immigration case you're going to find anywhere, since Fox News is "our" network.

For the "conservative" network to be pro-open borders is like secretly switching a diabetic's insulin with sugar. The false labeling is lethal. Millions of people watch Fox News and think they're getting the conservative antidote, when in fact the open borders corporatists have found a new way to package their open borders poison.

One of the hardest things to notice is what you're not being told. Immigration is the issue shaking up this entire election and driving Trump to the top of the polls. But at Fox News, immigration is Issue No. 22 — after Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton's emails, ISIS, ISIS, ISIS, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Export-Import Bank, entitlements reform, ISIS and everything else.

This week, we found out that Fox News plans to have "YouTube stars" at this week's debate asking regular, ordinary man-on-the-street questions that are on the mind of every Republican primary voter. One of the "YouTube stars" is an illegal alien. Another is an anti-Trump Muslim.

You won't read about Fox News's open-borders philosophy in National Review. You won't hear about it on almost any "conservative" webpages, magazines, radio shows, Twitter feeds or blogs. Fox News is the only game in town for conservative commentators and politicians. That's why no other candidate would dare cross Fox.

It took the first alpha male running for president in half a century to stand up to the Fox cartel on "conservative" opinion. Viewers beware: The only "conservative" opinion allowed on Fox News involves dissolving the nation's borders.

Judging by Donald Trump's astonishing rise in the polls, any cable network that took America's side on immigration would end the Fox News monopoly — and make America great again.

Mary and Hugh Newsom, parents of Christopher Newsom, talk about points made during the Supreme Court oral arguments held Wed. Jan. 27, 2016 in Knoxville. (Video by Michael Patrick/News Sentinel)

Published on Jan 27, 2016

Gary and Deena Christian Talk About Supreme Court Arguments

Credit: Michael Patrick; "Tennessee Supreme Court justices question David Eldridge, at podium, during oral arguments Wednesday in the appeal of Lemaricus Davidson, sentenced to death for his role in the 2007 killings of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Left to right are Holly Kirby, Cornelia A. Clark, Chief Justice Sharon G. Lee and Jeffrey S. Bivins. Davidson was tried in October 2009 and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of especially aggravated robbery and especially aggravated kidnapping, three counts of aggravated rape, and one count of facilitation of aggravated rape." (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Thanks to my friend and partner-in-crime, David in TN, for this article.

Readers of my last Knoxville Horror posting five days ago may be confused to read of the Tennessee Supreme Court in this posting, after reading of the U.S. Supreme Court in the previous one. The answer is simple: Today’s posting is about the attempt by Lemaricus Davidson’s lawyers to thwart justice, while the previous posting was about the attempt by George Thomas’ lawyers to thwart justice.

Credit: Michael Patrick; "Hugh Newsom, left, father of Christopher Newsom, and Gary Christian, father of Channon Christian, talk in the hallway before the Tennessee Supreme Court oral arguments Wednesday in the appeal of Lemaricus Davidson, sentenced to death for his role in the 2007 killings of Christian and Newsom. Davidson was tried in October 2009 and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of especially aggravated robbery and especially aggravated kidnapping, three counts of aggravated rape and one count of facilitation of aggravated rape." (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

Credit: Michael Patrick; "Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon G. Lee raises questions during oral arguments Wednesday in the appeal of Lemaricus Davidson, sentenced to death for his role in the 2007 killings of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Davidson was tried in October 2009 and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of especially aggravated robbery and especially aggravated kidnapping, three counts of aggravated rape and one count of facilitation of aggravated rape." (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

Credit: Michael Patrick; "Mary and Hugh Newsom, parents of Christopher Newsom, during the Tennessee Supreme Court oral arguments Wednesday in the appeal of Lemaricus Davidson, sentenced to death for his role in the 2007 killings of Newsom and Channon Christian. Davidson was tried in October 2009 and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of especially aggravated robbery and especially aggravated kidnapping, three counts of aggravated rape and one count of facilitation of aggravated rape." (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

For torture-killing ringleader Lemaricus Davidson, his appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court on Wednesday brought good news and bad.
The good? The high court justices are interested in his strongest argument for a new trial. The bad? They look to that issue to craft new law that would dash Davidson's appellate hopes.

The justices heard arguments Wednesday in Knoxville in the appeal of Davidson, who was sentenced to die for his role in the January 2007 carjacking, kidnapping, beating, rape and killings of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23. It is an appeal guaranteed by law in all capital cases.

The justices will weigh various issues surrounding Davidson's case, but made clear by their questions they are interested in using a search warrant foul-up to explore the possibility of what is known as a "good faith exception" under the law.

Federal courts long have used such an exception to essentially forgive honest mistakes, such as clerical errors, by police that lead to flawed legal documents, such as search warrants. Typically, if a search warrant is deemed legally flawed, whatever evidence is discovered as a result of that search is tossed out. If, however, a court determines the police were acting in good faith — officers didn't lie, for instance — when obtaining and executing the warrant, the evidence can be saved.

Tennessee courts have repeatedly declined to adopt a good faith exception. In 2011, the state Legislature created one. That law would not apply in Davidson's case, though, and the state's high court has not yet been asked to rule on whether that 2011 law is constitutionally valid.

Justice Jeffrey Bivins said during Davidson's appeal the high court already has one case ripe for consideration of the creation through case law [?!] of a good faith exception, and Davidson's case could provide fodder in that as well.

"This court has the authority to adopt that, and we want to know if we should adopt that," Bivins told attorney David Eldridge, who represents Davidson.

A good faith exception is intended to cover innocent, clerical mistakes — a wrong time or date, for instance. The justices Wednesday repeatedly said it appears the mistake in Davidson's case — a missing signature line and a signature in the wrong place on the warrant — was an honest one.

Eldridge countered the mistake at issue is more serious than a clerical error. Here's why: An officer's signature on a search warrant application is proof that officer swore under oath that the facts therein are true. No signature, no proof, Eldridge said. Also, because the officer in Davidson's case signed the warrant in a slot reserved for the signature of the officer who served the warrant, it runs afoul of a provision of the law that bars the officer seeking the warrant from also executing it.

"Failure to comply with the legal rules of procedure is pretty significant," Eldridge said.

The state Court of Criminal Appeals has held that because police already had amassed evidence against Davidson as a suspect and had discovered Newsom's body and Christian's missing vehicle near Davidson's house, authorities inevitably would have found Christian's body through legal means. It's known as the doctrine of inevitable discovery and in Davidson's case, it saved the day for prosecutors at trial.

The warrant mix-up occurred because lead investigator Todd Childress chose the wrong size paper to fax a copy of the warrant and supporting affidavit to a Knox County General Sessions Court judge for approval. The signature line wound up cut off from the document, and Childress inadvertently signed the document in the wrong place.

The mistake was discovered within minutes of the entry into Davidson's home, by then left vacant, but an officer found Christian's body before commanders ordered the raiding team to back out. A second search warrant — with the proper signature line and signature — was then obtained.

It could be months before the justices rule.

Christian and Newsom were carjacked and kidnapped outside the Washington Ridge Apartments and taken to Davidson's house, where both were beaten and raped. Newsom was taken from the house to nearby railroad tracks, where he was shot execution-style and his body set on fire. Christian was held captive for several more hours and repeatedly raped. She was stuffed alive inside a trash can and left to die.

About Jamie Satterfield
Jamie Satterfield is an award-winning journalist specializing in the law and crime.

4 COMMENTS

T E HENSLEY - Yesterday at 5:39 AM

Sloppy investigations and a drugged judge is nothing to be proud of. The one thing that our police are good at is beating inmates, but that does not bring convictions for these awful crimes.

SAMUEL BELL - Yesterday at 7:25 AM

T.E. you don't have to post comments first thing every morning with no substance just to see your name in print. Was the "good at beating inmates" comment really necessary, relevant, appropriate, or even accurate? Just listen to yourself, you are starting to sound like CJ. How much time have you spent in a dealing with violent individuals in a jail setting? Stick to the subject of the article or something you actually might know something about.

RICHARD & MARIANNE FISCHER - Yesterday at 7:47 AM

Hensley takes every opportunity to denigrate people. I've yet to see a reasonable argument from him.

RICHARD & MARIANNE FISCHER - Yesterday at 7:56 AM

There have always been two problems with the exclusionary principle. First, it was originally just an arbitrary decision by SCOTUS as a remedy for the police deliberately violating the "reasonable search" right in the Constitution, in the case before SCOTUS at the time. SCOTUS has no authority to, and did not, create a new right in the Constitution.

Second, there is no right in the Constitution for a "perfect search". Clerical errors, misspelled words, and the like do not constitute willful [sic] violate [sic] the Constitution, which only requires "reasonable" searches. Nothing in the Christian/Newsom search was "unreasonable".

The five known war criminals responsible for the violation and murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Two additional black rapist-killers were identified by DNA through semen they had left in Channon Christian's panties, but have yet to be named.

About 15 years ago, I said something nasty on CNN about Donald Trump’s hair. I can’t now remember the context, assuming there was one. In any case, Trump saw it and left a message the next day.

“It’s true you have better hair than I do,” Trump said matter-of-factly. “But I get more pussy than you do.” Click.

At the time, I’d never met Trump and I remember feeling amused but also surprised he’d say something like that. Now the pattern seems entirely familiar. The message had all the hallmarks of a Trump attack: shocking, vulgar and indisputably true.

Not everyone finds it funny. On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump. The Democrats assume he’s a bigot, pandering to the morons out there in the great dark space between Georgetown and Brentwood. The Republicans (those relatively few who live here) fully agree with that assessment, and they hate him even more. They sense Trump is a threat to them personally, to their legitimacy and their livelihoods. Idi Amin would get a warmer reception in our dog park.

I understand it of course. And, except in those moments when the self-righteous silliness of rich people overwhelms me and I feel like moving to Maine, I can see their points, some of them anyway. Trump might not be my first choice for president. I’m not even convinced he really wants the job. He’s smart enough to know it would be tough for him to govern.

But just because Trump is an imperfect candidate doesn’t mean his candidacy can’t be instructive. Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch carefully. Here’s some of what they might learn:

He Exists Because You Failed

American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.

Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on.

Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted.

Pretty embarrassing. And yet they’re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents “an existential threat to conservatism.”

Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal.

It turns out the GOP wasn’t simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy. That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too.

On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn’t appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it’s hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don’t go to public school. You don’t take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It’s all good.

Apart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn’t said anything especially shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals — these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the “ghost of George Wallace” that a Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder their voters are rebelling.

Truth is Not Only a Defense, It’s Thrilling

When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn’t been long. That’s not just a talking point about political correctness. It’s the central problem with our national conversation, the main reason our debates are so stilted and useless. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t have the words to describe it. You can’t even think about it clearly.

This depressing fact made Trump’s political career. In a country where almost everyone in public life lies reflexively, it’s thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe he’s wrong. It’s especially exciting when you suspect he’s right.

A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past 50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven’t assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed.
What’s our strategy for not repeating it here, especially after San Bernardino—attacks that seemed to come out of nowhere? Invoke American exceptionalism and hope for the best? Before Trump, that was the plan.

Republican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country.

Evangelicals understand this better than most. You read surveys that indicate the majority of Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch this: How could they be that dumb? He’s so obviously faking it.

They know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the Nicene Creed, or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What they’re looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How’d that work out for Christians, here and in Iraq?

Washington Really Is Corrupt

Everyone beats up on Washington, but most of the people I know who live here love it. Of course they do. It’s beautiful, the people are friendly, we’ve got good restaurants, not to mention full employment and construction cranes on virtually every corner. If you work on Capitol Hill or downtown, it’s hard to walk back from lunch without seeing someone you know. It’s a warm bath. Nobody wants to leave.
But let’s pretend for a second this isn’t Washington. Let’s imagine it’s the capital of an African country, say Burkina Faso, and we are doing a study on corruption. Probably the first question we’d ask: How many government officials have close relatives who make a living by influencing government spending? A huge percentage of them? OK. Case closed. Ouagadougou is obviously a very corrupt city.

That’s how the rest of the country views D.C. Washington is probably the richest city in America because the people who live there have the closest proximity to power. That seems obvious to most voters. It’s less obvious to us, because everyone here is so cheerful and familiar, and we’re too close to it. Chairman so-and-so’s son-in-law lobbies the committee? That doesn’t seem corrupt. He’s such a good guy.

All of which explains why almost nobody in Washington caught the significance of Trump’s finest moment in the first debate. One of the moderators asked, in effect: if you’re so opposed to Hillary Clinton, why did she come to your last wedding? It seemed like a revealing, even devastating question.

Trump’s response, delivered without pause or embarrassment: Because I paid her to be there. As if she was the wedding singer, or in charge of the catering.

Even then, I’ll confess, I didn’t get it. (Why would you pay someone to come to your wedding?) But the audience did. Trump is the ideal candidate to fight Washington corruption not simply because he opposes it, but because he has personally participated in it. He’s not just a reformer; like most effective populists, he’s a whistleblower, a traitor to his class. Before he became the most ferocious enemy American business had ever known, Teddy Roosevelt was a rich guy. His privilege wasn't incidental; it was key to his appeal. Anyone can peer through the window in envy. It takes a real man to throw furniture through it from the inside.

If Trump is leading a populist movement, many of his Republican critics have joined an elitist one. Deriding Trump is an act of class solidarity, visible evidence of refinement and proof that you live nowhere near a Wal-Mart. Early last summer, in a piece that greeted Trump when he entered the race, National Review described the candidate as “a ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula.” Virtually every other critique of Trump from the right has voiced similar aesthetic concerns.

Why is the Party of Ideas suddenly so fixated on fashion and hair? Maybe all dying institutions devolve this way, from an insistence on intellectual rigor to a flabby preoccupation with appearances. It happened in the Episcopal Church, once renowned for its liturgy, now a stop on architectural and garden tours. Only tourists go there anymore.

He Could Win

Of all the dumb things that have been said about Trump by people who were too slow to get finance jobs and therefore wound up in journalism, perhaps the stupidest of all is the one you hear most: He’ll get killed in the general! This is a godsend for Democrats! Forty-state wipeout! And so it goes mindlessly on.

Actually — and this is no endorsement of Trump, just an interjection of reality — that’s a crock. Of the Republicans now running, Trump likely has the best chance to beat Hillary Clinton, for two reasons:

First, he’s the only Republican who can meaningfully expand the pie. Polls show a surprisingly large number of Democrats open to Trump. In one January survey by the polling form Mercury Analytics , almost 20 percent said they’d consider crossing over to him from Hillary. Even if that’s double the actual number, it’s still stunning. Could Ted Cruz expect to draw that many Democrats? Could Jeb?

It’s an article of faith in Washington that Trump would tank the party’s prospects with minority voters. Sounds logical, especially if you’re a sensitive white liberal who considers the suggestion of a border wall a form of hate speech, but consider the baseline. In the last election, Romney got 6 percent of the black vote, and 27 percent of Hispanics. Trump, who’s energetic, witty and successful, will do worse? I wouldn’t bet on it.

But the main reason Trump could win is because he’s the only candidate hard enough to call Hillary’s bluff. Republicans will say almost anything about Hillary, but almost none challenge her basic competence. She may be evil, but she’s tough and accomplished. This we know, all of us.

But do we? Or is this understanding of Hillary just another piety we repeat out of unthinking habit, the political equivalent of, “you can be whatever you want to be,” or “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”? Trump doesn’t think Hillary is impressive and strong. He sees her as brittle and afraid.

He may be right, based on his exchange with her just before Christmas. During a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump said Hillary had been “schlonged” by Obama in the 2008 race. In response, the Clinton campaign called Trump a sexist. It’s a charge Hillary has leveled against virtually every opponent she’s faced, but Trump responded differently. Instead of scrambling to donate to breast cancer research, he pointed out that Hillary spent years attacking the alleged victims of her husband’s sexual assaults. That ended the conversation almost immediately.

It was the most effective possible response, though more obvious than brilliant. Why was Trump the only Republican to use it?

Republican primary voters may be wondering the same thing. Or maybe they already know. They seem to know a lot about Trump, more than the people who run their party. They know that he isn’t a conventional ideological conservative. They seem relieved. They can see that he’s emotionally incontinent. They find it exciting.

Washington Republicans look on at this in horror, their suspicions confirmed. Beneath the thin topsoil of rural conservatism, they see the seeds of proto-fascism beginning to sprout. But that’s not quite right. Republicans in the states aren’t dangerous. They’ve just evaluated the alternatives and decided those are worse.

Apparently, the attacker was black, which was why WPIX11 refused to give a description, thus imperiling countless other potential victims, and making it much harder to catch the perp. Since the victim was a very light-skinned Hispanic woman, he may have mistaken her for a white woman. WPIX11 personnel are clearly members of the Society for the Protection of Racist, Colored Criminals.

This was at least the fourth recent incident of a “raceless” black man (apparently different ones in each case) slashing the face of a white or light-skinned Hispanic (one white woman, one white man, and one light-skinned, Hispanic woman), it looks like we have a new black crime fashion for the MSM to cover up, and/or lie about.

In another report, black WPIX11 host Kori Chambers opens, “It’s a crime that’s so frightening because it can happen to anyone, at any time, and it seems like it’s happening … more often.”

In mid-December, a 16-year-old exchange students [sic] walking to school in Queens was slashed by a stranger with no warning.

A month later, a 30-year-old man walking in East Village was slashed in the face – again, with no warning.

Then on Monday [January 25], a 71-year-old woman was slashed in the face as she was waiting for a D train in lower Manhattan.

While one of the black attackers slashed a 30-year-old black man, the rest of the black attackers targeted people who were white, or could pass for white. And an attacker could sneak up behind someone in Greenwich Village, where most people are white, and assume he was white, until it’s too late.

The January 6 hate crime attack

In that case, the dispatch by New York Post alleged reporter, Daniel Prendergast, gave a vivid description of the assailant’s clothing: “a red NBA jacket,” but refused to give the police description of the racist attacker.

Although WPIX11 alleged reporter Nicole Johnson asserts that the victim “forgives the razor-wielding young man, and urges him to turn himself in,” she does not quote her as saying that, and nowhere in her video report does the victim, who speaks fluent English, say that. Am I suggesting that Johnson lied? Why not? The 71-year-old victim forgiving her vicious attacker would have been the most dramatic portion of the interview. Why on earth would the editor at WPIX11 cut it from the tape? Since MSM “reporters” and “editors” lie all the time, there is no reason to give Johnson or “PIX” the benefit of the doubt.

I initially copied and pasted the coding for the interview, but it’s an ooyala.com URL that autoplays and plays and plays, so I cut it. But I recommend that readers hit the link to the article, in order to check it out.

Left: Clockwise from top left: Jason Befort, Heather Muller, Aaron Sandler, Bradley Heyka; right: Ann Walenta. The Carr Brothers murdered them all, as well as gang-raping Muller and another woman who miraculously survived, when the gunshot meant to kill her instead glanced off a steel hairpin. She then lay on snow on a frozen football field, playing dead. As soon as the Carrs drove away, she ran naked through the snow, to knock on doors. When a family let her inside, in spite of her bleeding profusely from her head wound, she insisted that the people wait to listen to her recounting of the Carrs' description and their crimes before going to call 911, because she was afraid she was going to die, and that the could get away with it their crimes. The victim survived and recuperated from her wounds, and later met the only other surviving victim of the Carrs. The two victims fell in love, and married. On a microcosmic level of resurrection following an atrocity, it was analogous to me to Israel arising from the ashes of the Holocaust.

The Kansas Supreme Court had thrown out the death sentences of Jonathan and Reginald Carr, who were responsible for the so-called "Wichita Massacre" in 2000

The case is largely specific to the crimes at hand, but comes at a time when the country has shown renewed interest in the death penalty

Washington (CNN) The Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed the Kansas Supreme Court and ruled against two brothers who committed murders that one justice said "rank among the worst" he's ever seen.

The Kansas Supreme Court had thrown out the death sentences of Jonathan and Reginald Carr, who were convicted in the so-called "Wichita Massacre" in 2000.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the 8-1 majority, called the murders "acts of almost inconceivable cruelty and depravity" and sent the case back down to the lower court for further proceedings.

The case is largely specific to the crimes at hand, but comes at a time when the country has shown renewed interest in the death penalty, and two justices have suggested that the court should revisit its constitutionality. The Carr case did not directly target the constitutionality of the death penalty, and those two justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, joined Scalia's opinion in full. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

[That’s how much she hates the white victims of black racist atrocities.]

In his opinion, Scalia carefully detailed the violent aspects of the murders before discussing the legal issues at stake in the case.

Scalia wrote that the crime spree, which was carried out over three days, began in December 2000 when the two brothers carjacked and robbed one victim, forcing him to travel to ATM machines to make withdrawals. They attacked a woman who later died as a result of her injuries, and invaded the home of other victims, engaging in sex crimes and kidnapping, leaving four people dead. One survived only because her hair clip deflected a bullet to the head.

Scalia said that the survivor, named Holly, spotted a house with white Christmas lights, "started running toward it for help -- naked, skull shattered, and without shoes, through the snow and over barbed-wire fences."

Scalia wrote that Holly ultimately rang the doorbell, relayed the events of the night to the man who opened the door, "fearing that she would not live."

Although the brothers were convicted of murder, kidnapping, robbery and rape, the Kansas Supreme Court threw out the death sentences.

It held that the jury instructions violated the Eighth Amendment because the jurors weren't told that they didn't have to prove so-called "mitigating factors" -- issues like a defendant's history of abuse or mental illness -- beyond a reasonable doubt.
On a separate issue, the Kansas Supreme Court also said that the brothers should have had separate penalty proceedings because the evidence supporting one brother's sentence could be antagonistic of the other.

Scalia said the lower court was wrong on both counts. He said that jurors would not have misunderstood the jury instructions in the case "to prevent their consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence."

"The reality is," Scalia wrote, "that jurors do not parse instructions for subtle shades of meaning in the same way that lawyers might."

Supreme Court Justice Breyer on the death penalty 01:23

On the second issue, Scalia said that that "joint proceedings are not only permissible but are often preferable when the joined defendants' criminal conduct arises out of a single chain of events," he wrote.

"Only the most extravagant speculation would lead to the conclusion that the supposedly prejudicial evidence rendered the Carr brothers' joint sentencing proceeding fundamentally unfair," Scalia said.

At oral arguments back in October, Justice Samuel Alito had also highlighted the violent details of the case, saying, "we see practically every death penalty case that comes up anywhere in the country" and that the Kansas murders "have to rank as among the worst."

Sotomayor, however, said she saw no reason for the cases to have been reviewed by the Supreme Court.

"Kansas has not violated any federal constitutional right," she said, worrying that "cases like these prevent states from serving as necessary laboratories for experimenting with how best to guarantee defendants in [sic] a fair trial."

[Irrelevant garbage. The issue was whether the Kansas Supreme Court was going to be permitted to subvert yet again state’s death penalty statute. Sotomayor obviously supported the KSC’s conspiracy to obstruct justice.]

She said that the Kansas Supreme Court's opinion would be unlikely "to have much salience for other states," and if it was wrong, "it will not subvert federal law on a broader scale."

[More irrelevancies. The state appealed the corrupt KSC’s ruling, because the KSC was subverting state law.]

Monday, January 25, 2016

“Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, pose for a family photograph. Police say the couple were kidnapped in January by alleged carjackers, tortured and raped before each was slain.”

The foregoing KNS caption is nine years old. There's nothing "alleged" about what the black attackers did to the kids, not for years. Five of their seven black killers have been convicted, with two, identified by semen, as yet at large. By the way, Jamie Satterfield made up a racial fairy tale, whereby the last two black rapist-killers don't exist. She has long insisted, forensic science be damned, that the semen of the last two black rapist-killers identified were just admixtures of the semen from the known, convicted, black rapist-killers, Lemaricus Davidson and his half-brother, Letalvis Cobbins.

An accomplice [sic] in the January 2007 torture-slayings of a Knoxville couple is asking the nation's highest court to review his case.

[George Thomas was a killer, not an "accomplice." He put a bullet in Christopher Newsom's brain.]

George Thomas contends via defense attorney Stephen Ross Johnson that the Tennessee law of criminal responsibility under which he was convicted in the killings of Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, is unconstitutional both on paper and as applied in his case.

Johnson has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court. In it, he argues Thomas' convictions present a perfect test case of criminal responsibility laws across the nation that rely on the theory that although a defendant might not have intended the specific crime committed, he or she knew the outcome was likely.

Thomas was one of three men convicted as principle players in the carjacking, kidnapping, rapes and slayings of Christian and Newsom. Unlike ringleader Lemaricus Davidson and his brother, Letalvis Cobbins, there was no direct evidence, including DNA, to link Thomas.
His own words in a statement to police were the chief proof against him. In that statement, Thomas admitted he knew Davidson planned to carjack someone and was present in Davidson's Chipman Street house when the couple were brought — bound — inside. He said he surmised a fourth man, Eric Boyd, left with Newsom to kill him. Prosecutors have yet to amass evidence enough to charge Boyd, who is serving a federal sentence for harboring Davidson after the crimes.

Thomas also confessed doing nothing to rescue Christian, who remained alive hours after Newsom's slaying and was repeatedly raped and beaten. He admitted riding in Christian's stolen vehicle, fleeing to Kentucky after Newsom's body was found and monitoring websites for news about the investigation.

There was circumstantial evidence, too, though, including an independent witness who said he saw four men inside Christian's vehicle around the time Newsom would have been taken to his death alongside nearby railroad tracks and testimony from Davidson's girlfriend that Thomas was in the living room with Davidson, Cobbins and Boyd at a time when authorities believe a fifth suspect, Vanessa Coleman, was holding Christian captive inside a bathroom just a few feet away.

Just as in Thomas' case, the state had no direct evidence against Coleman. She, too, confessed being inside Davidson's home throughout the couple's captivity and deaths. She was convicted of lesser facilitation charges. Thomas, though, was convicted of the same crimes for which Davidson and Cobbins were deemed guilty under the legal theory known as criminal responsibility. The key difference between facilitation and criminal responsibility is intent. Coleman, a jury concluded, didn't intend through either her actions or inaction for the crimes to occur but nonetheless helped. A different jury decided Thomas' actions and inaction were intended to either help carry out the crimes or to benefit from them.

Thousands of defendants are convicted each year in Tennessee under the criminal responsibility law of crimes they did not personally carry out — the getaway driver, the lookout, the planner, to name a few examples.

Attorney Johnson argues in his U.S. Supreme Court petition that Tennessee's criminal responsibility law has been stretched so broadly through Tennessee Supreme Court rulings a defendant doesn't even have to intend to aid or benefit from the particular crimes at issue but any misdeeds that reasonably could occur. It's known as the "natural and probable consequences doctrine," and, as Johnson notes in his petition, appellate courts across the country have split on its constitutionality.

Johnson hopes that split among lower courts will lure the high court into taking Thomas' case.

"Through the natural and probable consequences doctrine, Thomas has been condemned to consecutive life terms simply for being an otherwise homeless man present in a house in which other armed individuals were committing crimes, during which they refused to allow him to leave," Johnson wrote.

"Accordingly, this case involves an important issue in which there is a split of authority in the lower courts over the constitutional limits to accomplice liability in criminal cases involving the common law doctrine of natural and probable consequences," he wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court only accepts a handful of cases each year, so the odds of success for Thomas in even garnering a hearing are low.
Thomas is serving life without parole as is Cobbins. Davidson received the death penalty. Coleman was sentenced to 35 years.

War criminal George Thomas. “George Thomas, an accomplice [sic] in the January 2007 torture-slayings of a Knoxville couple, is asking the nation's highest court to review his case.”

Without any drama, actor/director Clint Eastwood gave a common sense answer when asked his opinion about the controversy surrounding the all-white Oscar nominations.

“All I know is there are thousands of people in the Academy and a lot of them — the majority of them — haven’t won Oscars,” the multiple Academy Award winner told TMZ.

He admitted that he hasn’t kept up with the brouhaha, but said, “a lot of people are crying, I guess.”

Eastwood won best director and best picture for both “Million Dollar Baby” and “The [sic] Unforgiven.”

The controversy began when Al Sharpton noted that for the second year in a row, the Academy failed to nominate a single African-American. Since then, people in the industry have taken sides, and some are even boycotting the awards ceremony altogether.

In response to a growing list of celebrities who announced they were boycotting the event, the Academy caved and announced that it hereinafter “become less male and less white.”

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Of course, we don't even know if Gov. Palin is still even on board with Trump. The day she endorsed him with a twenty-minute speech, he reportedly noted to CNN's Don Lemon, “I didn't know it was going to be quite that long but she made a very good speech. I was very happy.”

The next day, Palin failed to show up for another scheduled event teaming up the two new best friends, and to my knowledge, hasn’t been heard from since on the matter, or with Trump.

Many of the points below are well-taken, and show the risk in supporting Trump. But said points are made by a cabal of phonies, opportunists, and saboteurs who have no business posing as men of principle. To them, I say: What do you have to offer, and why should anyone take anything you say seriously?

Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.

Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it.

His signature issue is concern over immigration — from Latin America but also, after Paris and San Bernardino, from the Middle East. He has exploited the yawning gap between elite opinion in both parties and the public on the issue, and feasted on the discontent over a government that can’t be bothered to enforce its own laws no matter how many times it says it will (President Obama has dispensed even with the pretense). But even on immigration, Trump often makes no sense and can’t be relied upon. A few short years ago, he was criticizing Mitt Romney for having the temerity to propose “self-deportation,” or the entirely reasonable policy of reducing the illegal population through attrition while enforcing the nation’s laws. Now, Trump is a hawk’s hawk.

He pledges to build a wall along the southern border and to make Mexico pay for it. We need more fencing at the border, but the promise to make Mexico pay for it is silly bluster. Trump says he will put a big door in his beautiful wall, an implicit endorsement of the dismayingly conventional view that current levels of legal immigration are fine. Trump seems unaware that a major contribution of his own written immigration plan is to question the economic impact of legal immigration and to call for reform of the H-1B–visa program. Indeed, in one Republican debate he clearly had no idea what’s in that plan and advocated increased legal immigration, which is completely at odds with it. These are not the meanderings of someone with well-informed, deeply held views on the topic.

As for illegal immigration, Trump pledges to deport the 11 million illegals here in the United States, a herculean administrative and logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government. Trump piles on the absurdity by saying he would re-import many of the illegal immigrants once they had been deported, which makes his policy a poorly disguised amnesty (and a version of a similarly idiotic idea that appeared in one of Washington’s periodic “comprehensive” immigration reforms). This plan wouldn’t survive its first contact with reality.

On foreign policy, Trump is a nationalist at sea. Sometimes he wants to let Russia fight ISIS, and at others he wants to “bomb the sh**” out of it. He is fixated on stealing Iraq’s oil and casually suggested a few weeks ago a war crime — killing terrorists’ families — as a tactic in the war on terror. For someone who wants to project strength, he has an astonishing weakness for flattery, falling for Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the Russian thug. All in all, Trump knows approximately as much about national security as he does about the nuclear triad — which is to say, almost nothing.

Indeed, Trump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with “winning,” regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.

It is unpopular to say in the year of the “outsider,” but it is not a recommendation that Trump has never held public office. Since 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture. The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in other fields is not transferable. That is why all American presidents have been politicians, or generals.

Any candidate can promise the moon. But politicians have records of success, failure, or plain backsliding by which their promises may be judged. Trump can try to make his blankness a virtue by calling it a kind of innocence. But he is like a man with no credit history applying for a mortgage — or, in this case, applying to manage a $3.8 trillion budget and the most fearsome military on earth.

Trump’s record as a businessman is hardly a recommendation for the highest office in the land. For all his success, Trump inherited a real-estate fortune from his father. Few of us will ever have the experience, as Trump did, of having Daddy-O bail out our struggling enterprise with an illegal loan in the form of casino chips. Trump’s primary work long ago became less about building anything than about branding himself and tending to his celebrity through a variety of entertainment ventures, from WWE to his reality-TV show, The Apprentice. His business record reflects the often dubious norms of the milieu: using eminent domain to condemn the property of others; buying the good graces of politicians — including many Democrats — with donations.

About Me

I am a dissident journalist, whose work has been published in dozens of daily newspapers, magazines, and journals in English, German, and Swedish, under my own name and many pseudonyms. While living in internal exile in New York, where I am whitelisted, I maintain NSU/The Wyatt Earp Journalism Bureau and some eight other blogs (some are distinctive but occasional venues, while others are mirrors), and also write for stout-hearted men such as Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor. Please hit the “Donate” button on your way out. Thanks, in advance.
Follow my tweets at @NicholasStix.

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